According to REVE, China will double its solar power capacity and is likely to reach over 2 gigawatts (GW) by the end of the year. The government has set a target of 10 GW by 2015. (A typical nuclear facility produces 1 GW or one billion watts.)

The solar feed-in tariff, the price of solar power generated electricity, could drop below 0.8 yuan (12.5 cents) for each kilowatt-hour (kWh) by 2015, equal to conventional coal-fired electricity by that time, according to the latest report by the Energy Research Institute, China’s think tank.…analysts expected China to install 1GW of photovoltaic power in 2011, and 1.4GW in 2012. (New) incentives could now push installations up about 50%, adding a combined (2011 and 2012) 1.5GW to the estimate. 2012 solar installations could reach a total of 2.4GW.

China is also expected to produce 90,000 tons of polysilicon this year, representing 80 percent of its domestic demand. Polysilicon is an essential material for solar photovoltaic (PV) panel production. China is already the world’s largest solar-panel maker and produces about half of the world’s solar PV panels.

China wants to obtain 11.4 percent of its energy from renewable energy sources by 2015, according to the country’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015).